This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the presently described embodiments. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present embodiments. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
In order to meet consumer and industrial demand for natural resources, companies often invest significant amounts of time and money in finding and extracting oil, natural gas, and other subterranean resources from the earth. Particularly, once desired subterranean resources such as oil or natural gas are discovered, drilling and production systems are often used to access and extract the resources. These systems may be located onshore or offshore depending on the locations of the desired resources.
Once extracted, the resources are often transported to desired locations, such as refineries. Crude oils, for example, are typically processed and separated into various components at an oil refinery. The components can be separated by their boiling points via fractional distillation. In this process, crude oil is heated until most of the oil is vaporized. The hot vapors are then injected into a distilling column, where the vapors cool as they rise through the column. The distilling column includes bubble trays at various levels. The rising vapors cool as they pass through the trays and the different components condense into liquid in different trays according to their boiling points, with liquids having higher boiling points nearer the bottom of the distilling column and liquids having lower boiling points nearer the top. These condensed and separated liquids, which are also known as “cuts,” can be drawn from the distilling column for further processing and distribution. By way of example, in order of higher to lower boiling points, the separated liquids can include heavy gas oil, light gas oil, kerosene, naphtha, and straight run gasoline. Heavier liquids may be withdrawn from the bottom of the distilling column, and lighter gases that pass through all of the bubble trays without condensing (e.g., butane and propane) can be withdrawn from the top of the column.
Commercial demand varies for the different crude oil components, and oil refineries may target a particular yield (i.e., the percentages of the components produced from the separated crude oil) to efficiently meet demand for the components. The product yield depends on the characteristics of the crude oils processed, but also on current capabilities and characteristics of the refinery itself. To produce a desired yield and meet market demand, refineries may use a linear programming (LP) model for their specific reactors to target the purchase of crude oil feedstocks with particular characteristics for blending to a recipe determined by the LP model. Crude oil assays can indicate certain characteristics of potential feedstocks for the refinery, and a blend recipe can be determined using these crude oil assays. But the crude oil feedstocks may not be homogenous and their properties may vary. Consequently, the crude oil feedstocks actually purchased and used in the refineries may not be accurately represented by their assays. This, in turn, can negatively impact the yield of the refineries' products.